This is the seventh article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VII, as promised in part VI, we focus completely on CDE, the Common Desktop Environment.

Everything is a square, and with so many squares on the screen, you start to lose where things end.

You probably mean that everything is rectangular. If it was square, everything would have 4 equal sides.

In any case, I've always felt exactly the opposite about window borders, that is, that rounded corners are stupid. They would make more sense if your monitor was rounded on the edges, though, like earlier television screens. More importantly, they make the exact location of corner resizing control ambiguous.

I'm with the original author here. I use CDE almost every day even now, and while I prefer tiling WMs for maximum efficiency, CDE is still my favorite non-tiling one.